Florida man swallowed by sinkhole, presumed dead

Jeremy Bush, brother of Jeff Bush, breaks down as he speaks to the media about attempting to rescue Jeff as he disappeared in a sinkhole Friday, March 1, 2013, in Seffner, Fla. Jeff Bush screamed for help and disappeared as a large sinkhole opened under the bedroom of the house, his brother said Friday. Jeremy Bush told rescue crews he heard a loud crash near midnight Thursday, then heard his brother screaming. There's been no contact with Jeff Bush since then, and neighbors on both sides of the home have been evacuated. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

SEFFNER, Fla. (AP) — A sinkhole 20 feet across and 20 feet deep opened up under a man’s bedroom and swallowed him up without a trace, taking his bed, TV set and dresser, too, as he screamed for help.

Jeff Bush, 37, was presumed dead after the concrete floor caved in about 11 p.m. Thursday as everyone in the house was turning in for the night. It gave way with a loud crash that brought his brother running.

Jeremy Bush said he jumped into the hole but couldn’t see his brother and had to be rescued himself by a sheriff’s deputy who reached out and pulled him to safety as the ground crumbled around him.

“The floor was still giving in and the dirt was still going down, but I didn’t care. I wanted to save my brother,” Jeremy Bush, 36, said through tears Friday in a neighbor’s yard. “But I just couldn’t do nothing.”

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He added: “I could swear I heard him hollering my name to help him.”

Officials lowered equipment into the sinkhole and saw no signs of life, said Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokeswoman Jessica Damico.

The dresser and the TV set had vanished down the hole.

“All I could see was the cable wire running from the TV going down into the hole. I saw a corner of the bed and a corner of the box spring and the frame of the bed,” Jeremy Bush said.

Engineers worked to determine whether the ground was stable enough to support heavy machinery to help them recover the body. They said they may have to demolish the small, sky-blue house, even though from the outside, there appeared to be nothing wrong with the four-bedroom, concrete-wall structure, built in 1974.

Florida is prone to sinkholes because below ground is limestone, a porous rock that easily dissolves in water. A sinkhole near Orlando grew to 400 feet across in 1981 and devoured property valued at $2 million, five sports cars, most of two businesses, a three-bedroom house and the deep end of an Olympic-size swimming pool.

Florida law requires that home insurers provide sinkhole coverage

Jeremy Bush said someone came out to the home a couple of months ago to check for sinkholes and other things, apparently for insurance purposes. “He said there was nothing wrong with the house. Nothing. And a couple of months later, my brother dies. In a sinkhole,” Bush said.

Six people were at the home at the time, including Jeremy Bush’s wife and his 2-year-old daughter. The brothers worked maintenance jobs, including picking up trash along highways.